


confirmation bias

by thir13enth



Series: rose gold [5]
Category: Fairy Tail
Genre: F/F, also sigh it's been a very long since i've published anything, continues on as always, femflash february, forgive me this is me trying to rev myself back up again, lol this title is so random
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2017-02-19
Packaged: 2018-09-25 15:51:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9827327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thir13enth/pseuds/thir13enth
Summary: she never asked (if she could sit with her).—erlu.





	

**Author's Note:**

> with apologies for being excruciatingly late, i present this erlu oneshot to **lucylaneeffect** (on tumblr) for ft femslash vday exchange! and oh what a surprise that i was matched with you, haha! at any rate, i hope you find it to your liking :)

Lucy takes the first available seat she sees in the cafeteria — and she swears this isn’t just because Erza Scarlet is sitting right across from it.

Lucy’s trying to get to know her product design classmate a little better anyway, and today — with a sheer burst of rare confidence — instead of watching Erza eat alone and wondering why she chose not to eat in company, Lucy’s decided that she would have lunch with the redhead and perhaps even figure out why she usually ate by herself.

“I’ll eat lunch with you today,” Lucy announces as she swings her leg over the cafeteria bench, dropping her lunchbag onto the table. “You don’t mind, right?”

She’s a little forceful with her request, but she knows that Erza wouldn’t decline.

“Apparently not,” Erza replies, with a hint of a wry laugh.

Lucy can’t help but look up to meet the other woman’s eyes. Even after an entire two months into the semester of being in the same small group for their product design class, Lucy still finds Erza’s voice surprising.

Erza’s voice is husky, a little rough around the edges but somehow soothing all the same. Lucy wonders why Erza doesn’t speak up more during small group discussion — she seemed to know a lot more than all the other know-it-all men in class and would probably articulate it a lot better. Lucy would 11 times out of 10 prefer to hear Erza’s reasoning through a short answer question than any of the attempts at theory the guys tried to take a shot at.

“Sorry,” Lucy apologizes, out of reflex.

“Oh, no, I really don’t mind,” Erza clarifies. “Why would I turn down the opportunity to get to know the only other female in our product design class?”

Lucy laughs as if she hadn’t thought the same thing just a few seconds before. “The gender-ratio is quite disturbing,” she admits.

“I’m pretty sure there’s more girls in our class,” Erza says. “They’re just smart enough to realize that lecture isn’t worth their time and that they’d rather be checking their email than sitting through an hour and a half of that man’s rambling.”

Lucy perks up. “You go to lecture?”

“In spirit.”

“Oh,” Lucy replies, blushing. She looks down. “I guess I’m not very smart.”

Erza vigorously shakes her head. “No, I think you’re smarter than everyone else because you’re probably able to actually follow along and understand what’s going on in lecture,” she counters. “And I think you realize that even as terrible of a teacher the professor is, his classes are also what we’re all taking college loans out for.”

Lucy can’t help the shy smile that’s formed across her lips. “Not really.”

“Definitely smarter than me, who thought that it was a good idea to spend money on the cafeteria strawberry shortcake rather than take the time to prepare a homemade meal,” Erza remarks, nodding at Lucy’s arrangement of tupperware. She pushes aside the square container and spoon in front of her — telltale signs of whipped cream and red strawberry syrup left on the plastic.

Lucy blows on the bit of hot pasta on her fork. “Just premade lasagna that I nuked in the microwaved. I’m not that fancy.”

She doesn’t think about figuring out when Erza’s birthday is the next time she’s on social media. She doesn’t think about researching the best strawberry shortcake near campus, and she definitely doesn’t think about buying a slice and gifting it to Erza whenever that day is, saying a witty line that she hasn’t thought of yet referring back this moment.

She eats her lasagna instead, nevertheless aware that Erza is watching her silently.

“So why do you usually eat alone anyway?” she asks, thinking that maybe Erza would take the cue to fill in the silence.

She doesn’t.

“I just prefer to,” Erza answers briefly.

Not expecting the awkward silence to return so quickly, Lucy swallows her bite of piping hot lasagna too quickly. She reaches for her water to take a swig to help cool her scorched throat — quickly, so that she can carry the conversation forward sooner than later.

“I mean, not like I’m saying it’s bad — I’m just curious,” Lucy sputters, screwing the top back on her canteen.

“I like to people-watch,” Erza replies.

Lucy gulps down her water. She forces a couple of laughs, and she’s not sure if the redhead is being serious. “But actually?”

Erza nods, then starts pointing out the various faces around them with her eyes. “She always gets a vegetable pizza but picks out the olives and folds them neatly into a napkin before she throws them away,” she says, looking over at a brunette. “And then the person that always sits next to her is probably her lab partner for organic chemistry. I see him passing goggles to her and lab notes. They’re always half-eating, half doing an assignment so I’m pretty sure that they have that class right after lunch.”

Lucy can’t help but look up — and indeed the two people Erza’s talking about are doing exactly as she said: the brunette is eating an olive-less pizza with her left hand and scribbling with a pencil in her right hand, and the guy next to her looks like he’s working on a spreadsheet, typing furiously away.

Erza waits for Lucy’s eyes to come back to hers before she points to another group with her eyes. “This crew is the one I’m trying to figure out. I can’t figure out if the tall girl is part of their inner circle or not. She seems close to like two of them, but the other three never sit next to her,” Erza muses. “Or maybe they just always take the same seats for lunch. But that’s not entirely true because everyone else switches around, but the tall girl and those three aren’t ever next to each other.”

Lucy tries not to look too long at the group of six to see if she can answer Erza’s questions, but she can’t admit that now she’s a tad interested. She turns her head back to Erza.

“You’re creepy,” Lucy finally says.

Erza only smiles. Then she leans in and looks a little accusingly at Lucy. “I mean, only someone else that also people-watches would know I eat alone.”

“Anyone can notice that,” Lucy defends.

“Anyone that watches me at least.”

Lucy challenges Erza’s gaze, staring back at her eyes for as long as she can. Lucy eventually defers when her cheeks get a little hot.

“Well, you don’t always eat alone,” Lucy says, as if confessing that Erza’s caught her attention more times than not. She picks at clump of cooked tomato in the lasagna sauce. “Every now and then there’s this guy that drops by.”

“Jellal,” Erza affirms, smile never leaving her face.

“Sure,” Lucy replies. It’s not like she knows the blue-haired other person anyway. He’s probably just as mysterious and unassuming as Erza, by the looks of it. Lucy’s tried figuring out who the guy is, without much luck. “He seems close to you.”

“He is. We’ve known each other since we were children.”

Lucy nods, continuing to eat.

“We’re not together.”

Lucy’s fork freezes before her lips. “I mean… I wasn’t assuming anything,” she replies slowly.

“I just wanted you to know,” Erza simply says.

“I see.” Lucy chews slowly, her lunch now no longer as hot as it was when she first removed it from the microwave. She’s not really sure what else to say, or what to make of what Erza says, but she feels like it’s important to respond.

“I notice that you usually sit with that blue-haired girl,” Erza tells her. “But only on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so she probably has class or something.”

“Yeah, Juvia,” Lucy replies.

“I guess we both sit with mysterious blue-haired people.”

Lucy laughs. “Yeah… actually, Juvia and I are childhood friends too. We’re very close. Especially this year since our schedules are almost the same, we spend almost all our time together except Monday, Wednesday, and Friday lunches because she has fluid dynamics,” she explains. There’s a brief pause, and then Lucy clarifies, “I mean, we’re not like… _together_ though, you know.”

Erza smirks. “I never asked,” she says, turning Lucy’s comment back around.

“I guess with all your people-watching you would have figured it out already.”

Erza shrugs, tilting her head to the side. It’s only now that Lucy notices that she’s wearing earrings, a single crystal dangling from a silver ring. “It’s nice to hear if my theories are right or not.”

“Were you?”

And for the first time, Erza’s caught off guard. Her eyebrows raise slightly. “Was I what?”

“Right or wrong —” Lucy says, a grin growing over her face. “—about what you hypothesized about me.”

Erza thinks for a moment. “You mean you want to know what I thought of you before you came over to sit down to eat lunch with me?”

“Yes.”

Erza laughs softly. “I mean, I don’t know,” she says. “All I knew was that you were the only other girl in my discussion section for product design and that you usually bring in your own food to eat from home. It’s healthy because at least from a distance I usually saw some green — and your skin is pretty clear so you have to be doing something.”

Lucy snorts. “Well I’m not being too healthy today.”

The other girl smiles gently. “I just noticed that you spend Tuesdays and Thursdays eating alone and people-watching,” Erza continues. She pauses briefly, then adds, “And I wondered if you would ever come over and join me — especially because I know that you know I sit here by myself.”

Lucy twirls her fork in her food. “So now what?”

“Well now this cute blonde girl is sitting in front of me eating her lunch and keeping me company and I feel like a slob because I wasn’t ready for her to sit across from me on a day I decided not to put on makeup or wear proper clothes or buy a healthy lunch.”

Lucy bites her bottom lip, trying not to laugh too hard. She pretends the heat in her cheeks is from the rising steam from her food even though she knows it’s been fifteen minutes in and her food is more cold than warm now.

Lucy practices the words in her head before she says it out loud. “Maybe next time I’ll ask if you mind if I have lunch with you this Thursday _before_ I sit down.”

Erza smiles. “Maybe next time I won’t stop you.”


End file.
